University System News:
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Georgia colleges seek to fill student needs as Hispanic enrollment increases
By Eric Stirgus
More than two dozen Hispanic Georgia Gwinnett College students gathered in a ballroom on campus last Tuesday for a networking session with local business and community leaders called “Noche de Liderazgo” or “Night of Leadership.” First-year student Brian Catalan attended, hoping to network and to find his footing on campus. Catalan, 19, a native Georgian whose parents are from Guatemala, felt he needed a stronger connection with his Hispanic heritage. He recognized a few years ago he was saying some words around his parents in English that he once said in Spanish. …For Georgia Gwinnett officials, the goal of this event and others is to help students like Catalan succeed in the classroom and connect culturally on campus. It has become part of the mission of several Georgia colleges and universities. The percentage of Hispanic students in Georgia’s public university system more than doubled in the past decade to slightly more than 10%, growing at a faster rate than any racial demographic group.
Valdosta Today
USG Foundation raises over $625,000 for scholarships, Kemp receives award
The 17th annual Regents’ Scholarship Gala on Wednesday evening raised more than $625,000 from generous sponsors and a live auction to support and provide need-based scholarships for University System of Georgia (USG) students across the state. Hosted by the USG Foundation, the annual event included Governor Brian P. Kemp and First Lady Marty Kemp as well as supporters, donors, alumni, legislators, members of the Board of Regents and presidents from USG’s 26 public colleges and universities. The need-based scholarships funded through the gala will be awarded for the 2021-22 academic year. Each institution’s president selects scholarship recipients at their respective campuses. Over the 17 years it has held this annual event, the USG Foundation has awarded more than $17 million to support the scholarship program, faculty recognition and key USG initiatives.
accessWDUN
University of North Georgia student makes U.S. Cyber Team
By Austin Eller Anchor/Reporter
A student from the University of North Georgia has made the first-ever U.S. Cyber Team and will compete in the International Cybersecurity Challenge in June in Athens, Greece. Taylor Hitt, a post-baccalaureate student studying cybersecurity from Cumming, Georgia, is one of 25 individuals from across the country to make the team and the only one from Georgia. Hitt said he competed in his first cybersecurity competition before he was a student at UNG, but he dove into it further upon enrollment at the university.
Gwinnett Daily Post
UGA hospitality students graduate with hands-on experience
By Émilie Gille CAES News
When Connor Logan graduates from the University of Georgia with his degree in hospitality and food industry management, he’ll have in-depth knowledge of his chosen field and hands-on experience in food and beverage service, front desk responsibilities, revenue management, and sales and events — all the critical elements of running a big hotel. And he’ll have been paid for the experience, interning at the UGA Center for Continuing Education & Hotel.
Athens Banner-Herald
UGA honors Black greek life with new markers on campus
DJ Simmons
The first two Black greek organizations at the University of Georgia were established fifty-two years ago. Now, the Divine Nine have a permanent site on campus. Campus markers were unveiled Friday to honor the nine historically Black fraternities and sororities that are members of the National Pan-Hellenic Council. Members of the organizations gathered outside the Tate Student Center to celebrate what was called a historic day. “It’s fitting that we are dedicating these markers during the 60th anniversary of the desegregation of the University of Georgia,” Jere Morehead, president of the University of Georgia, said. “The first two Black students to attend UGA were also members of the first two NPHC organizations to be established on our campus.”
Statesboro Herald
Georgia Southern Museum reopens after 3 years
After nearly three years and following extensive architectural renovations, the Georgia Southern Museum, one of the longest-standing educational centers on the university’s campus, reopened to visitors on Sunday.
earth.com Nature, Science, Life
Corals get a boost from other coral species in underwater gardens
By Alison Bosman, earth.com staff writer
Corals are the foundation of tropical reef systems worldwide, where they help form habitat suitable for countless other associated species. In the past 30 years, however, corals have suffered degradation due to pollution, overfishing and global warming. The Caribbean has lost 80-90 percent of its coral cover, a 2015 bleaching event killed nearly half of the remaining corals along the Great Barrier Reef, and the Indo-Pacific coral reefs are under threat. Against this backdrop, two researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology set out to investigate whether newly established coral species grow better in the presence of other coral species, or whether competition between different species restricts growth rates. Cody Clements and Mark Hay traveled to Mo’orea, French Polynesia, in the tropical Pacific Ocean, where they planted coral gardens differing in coral species diversity to evaluate the relative importance of mutualistic versus competitive interactions between the corals as they grew. This research has relevance in terms of understanding how to promote reef recovery during the early stages following large-scale coral loss, such as occurs more and more frequently due to the warming of the seas.
EurekAlert!
Sex differences emerging in blood pressure regulation
Another difference between females and males appears to be a key mechanism in how they become hypertensive, scientists say, and consequently which antihypertensives should be most effective for them. “There is cumulative evidence that while the fundamental system for blood pressure control is the same, blood pressure regulation in males and females is somewhat different,” says Dr. Mykola Mamenko, physiologist in the Department of Physiology at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University. Mamenko’s lab has evidence in two common rat models of human hypertension, that in females, it is aldosterone, a hormone which cues our kidneys to hold onto more sodium and consequently more fluid, which drives blood pressure further up.
East Bay Times
Journalist warns Missouri about security breach. He’s threatened with criminal charges.
Post-Dispatch gave state schools agency time to fix the problem before it published story
By The Associated Press
Gov. Mike Parson on Thursday condemned the St. Louis Post-Dispatch for exposing a flaw in a state database that allowed public access to thousands of teachers’ Social Security numbers, even though the paper held off from reporting about the flaw until after the state could fix it. The governor suggested that the Post-Dispatch journalist who broke the story committed a crime and said the news outlet would be held accountable. …The Post-Dispatch broke the news about the security flaw on Wednesday. The newspaper said it discovered the vulnerability in a web application that allowed the public to search teacher certifications and credentials. It notified the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and gave it time to fix the problem before the story was published. After removing the pages from its website Tuesday, the agency issued a news release that called the person who discovered the vulnerability a “hacker” — an apparent reference to the reporter — who “took the records of at least three educators.” …The Post-Dispatch journalist found that the school workers’ Social Security numbers were in the HTML source code of the pages. It estimated that more than 100,000 Social Security numbers were vulnerable. Source codes are accessible by right-clicking on public webpages. …Peter Swire, a cyber law expert and professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology’s School of Cybersecurity and Privacy, said flagging security vulnerabilities on publicly accessible websites is a “public service” and is “clearly not criminal under federal law.”
Other News:
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Map: Coronavirus deaths and cases in Georgia (updated Oct. 15)
An updated count of coronavirus deaths and cases reported across the state
CONFIRMED CASES: 1,250,673
CONFIRMED DEATHS: 23,869 | This figure does not include additional cases that the DPH reports as suspected COVID-19-related deaths. County is determined by the patient’s residence, when known, not by where they were treated.
Higher Education News:
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Admin 101: Campus Administrators Need Self-Care, Too
You can’t look after others if the intense stresses of the job are threatening your own mental or physical health.
By David D. Perlmutter
With so many students and faculty and staff members under so much stress across academe, it’s no surprise that the administration is a target of their ire. Point out that campus leaders and managers have been struggling with serious tests of their own physical and psychological health, and you may hear little sympathy, if not outright disdain. … et we are now seeing the fallout from suppressing or ignoring the importance of self-care for administrators. Recently, I talked with the president of a major search firm who said, “We have never been at a time where more people are dropping out of [academic] administration or are deciding not to go into administration.” Likewise, bright colleagues all over the country tell me, “Nobody wants to be chair of our department” and “I used to think I wanted to be a dean, but not anymore.” This is a potentially disastrous situation because higher education has never needed effective, empathetic, and, yes, enthusiastic leadership more than it does now. Further, research suggests that people in groups that have historically been underrepresented in management — such as women and people of color — are less likely to aspire to move up if leadership positions are seen as debilitating or high risk. So as administrators, we must pay some attention to our own self-care — without taking away from the significant hardships of the people we serve.
Inside Higher Ed
Faculty Diversity Fell in Time of Crisis
New study looks back to find that faculty diversity took a hit in terms of tenure-track hires during and after the Great Recession. Study also looks ahead to warn that the same thing could happen during and after COVID-19.
By Colleen Flaherty
Four-year colleges and universities cut tenure-track hiring by 25 percent around the time of the Great Recession — and hires of people of color declined disproportionately, especially at public and research-oriented institutions, according to a new study in Sociological Science. In addition to these data, the new paper offers another, urgent takeaway: the same reversal of progress toward faculty diversity could happen in the COVID-19 era, if institutions don’t take steps to ensure it doesn’t.
Atlanta Business Chronicle
Report: Here’s how much tuition-free community college could cost some states
By Hilary Burns – Editor, The National Observer Higher Education,
America’s College Promise, the House Education and Labor Committee’s proposal for free community college, would create a robust federal funding strategy in higher education, but some states including Vermont, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania would also have to pay up. To achieve tuition-free community college for eligible students, states will on average have to increase their investment by 12% or $387 per full-time equivalent student in the first year of the program, according to a recent analysis from The State Higher Education Executive Officers. SHEEO estimates that 985 state-owned community colleges in all 50 states serving about 9.4 million students would qualify for the program. The program would work by using the median published in-state tuition and fee rate for the 985 eligible institutions, which was $4,586 in 2020, SHEEO said.
Inside Higher Ed
Biden Says He Won’t Get His Full Community College Plan
By Scott Jaschik
President Biden said Friday that he will probably not get the funds from Congress to make community colleges tuition-free, as he’s proposed.
Diverse Issues in Higher Education
Negotiations Kick Off on Prison Education Programs, Pell Grants
Rebecca Kelliher
While locked up on a ten-year prison sentence in his early twenties, Dr. Stanley Andrisse was told that he was “scum,” and that his life was hopeless from here on out. But soon, higher education changed all of that. When Andrisse left prison, he pursued a doctorate with the support of a few professors who saw potential. Today, he is an assistant professor at Howard University’s School of Medicine, where he researches diabetes as an endocrinologist. …Andrisse started a nonprofit called Prison to Pro to help current and formerly incarcerated people pursue higher education. And this week, he is one of a handful of formerly incarcerated voices who will speak to the U.S. Department of Education (ED) in negotiations on prison education programs, namely what expanding Pell Grant funding to incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people will look like.